Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda UFSD
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KW Challenge/Interact Club Brings 'Purple Pinkie' Project to KT
Thanks to the efforts of students and staff in the Ken-Ton School District in partnership with the Kenmore Rotary Club, thousands of children will soon receive the polio vaccine as part of an international effort to eradicate the virus.
In January, volunteers from the Kenmore West Challenge/Interact Club brought the annual “Purple Pinkie Project” to six elementary and middle schools over a two-day period. The volunteers painted elementary and middle school students’ pinkie fingers purple in exchange for donations to support Rotary International’s efforts to eradicate polio. These funds will be matched by the Kenmore Rotary Club and then tripled by the Gates Foundation.
There was a time when hundreds of thousands of children each year died or faced life-changing disabilities resulting from the polio virus. Led by Rotary International, the World Health Organization and UNICEF, a world-wide effort spanning multiple decades to eradicate polio has come so close to making this terrible disease a thing of the past.
The purple pinkie finger is an internationally recognized symbol of the polio vaccine; participants had their pinkie fingers painted purple to show their support and raise awareness about the effort.
The students from Kenmore West who participated were Sheila Guetti, Amanda Gambino, Hanin Faisal, Andriy Vakolyuk, Kevin Hamilton, Donia Jebara, Angle Mrozik, Anna Puchalski, Skylar Stychalska, Parker Wilby, Sienna DiGiulio, Victoria Nada, Julia Smith, Emily Forney, Anthony Williams and Dominique Eubanks.